Brazilian protests: a kind of impatient fatigue

The demonstrations that are shaking Brazil’s normally laid-back society are channeling a widespread sentiment: Enough is enough.

However, with the exception of professional agitators, there is no hatred in the street protests. Instead, there is a kind of impatient fatigue.

Brazilians are tired of being brutalized by public transportation in metropolitan areas; tired of ghastly hospitals; tired of corruption scandals; and tired, especially, of inflation, which has returned like a dreaded disease, once again eroding people’s purchasing power and threatening to return millions to the poverty from which they only recently escaped.

It is difficult to disagree with the protesters. Nevertheless, there are many economic reasons to worry about the effect of the demonstrations.

Since the Plano Real was put in place in 1994, which brought inflation down to manageable levels, Brazil has achieved remarkable economic and social progress.

Their success lifted a significant share of poor Brazilians into the middle class and made Brazil an attractive destination for foreign investors.

Yet the current situation is shifting expectations into reverse.

To dampen the protests, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s government has launched various ruses — subsidizing fuel prices, while reducing taxes on electricity, automobiles and household appliances — and has attempted to conceal them in ways that allow the authorities to claim that inflation remains under control. Yet all of Brazil is feeling the impact of higher prices. If the official inflation target loses credibility, price growth will accelerate further.

The underlying problem is that Brazil’s growth model, which allowed 35 million people to enter the middle class in the past decade, is itself at the brink of exhaustion. The maximum benefit from reducing unemployment, increasing the real minimum wage and expanding credit — creating a strong rise in consumption, owing to rapid gains in real income — has already been reaped.

Indeed, consumption is now decreasing, with a recent poll by the Brazilian Confederation of Trade and Business Associations indicating a 6.2 percent annual decline this year.

In March, household-debt levels reached a record high of 44 percent of income. Slower growth and more modest real wage increases are likely, which will reverse households’ optimistic expectations.

Meanwhile, for Brazil’s new middle class, higher incomes have meant higher tax payments — and thus a growing sense of entitlement. Many are especially resolved to fight for more and better public services in view of the government’s misplaced spending priorities, which include soccer stadiums and other pharaonic construction projects.

In fact, Brazilians’ purchasing power could shrink further, owing to the depreciation of the real against the US dollar. If Brazil’s government does not tighten fiscal policy, the exchange rate will generate more inflationary pressure.

The alternative — an increase in interest rates — would undermine both consumption and productive investment.

What went wrong?

Until recently, Brazilians enjoyed rapid GDP growth, full employment, rising incomes, a range of social-welfare benefits and international praise. The government swore that the global crisis would not reach the country.